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• Windows 7 BSOD - ntoskrnl?

  - by Ken Mason

  2 new HP Pavilion notebooks with 7 Home Premium pre-loaded with Norton. My first act was to use the Norton Removal Tool and load ZoneAlarm free and AVG Free. Frequent random BSOD's ever since...I found my way into Debug and have had various reports regarding ntoskrnl, depending on the status of symbols. It's been many years since I played with (DOS 3.x) debug, so this has been a considerable fumble. Excerpts follow and any insights would be greatly appreciated, as I am not a developer: ADDITIONAL_DEBUG_TEXT: Use '!findthebuild' command to search for the target build information. If the build information is available, run '!findthebuild -s ; .reload' to set symbol path and load symbols. MODULE_NAME: nt FAULTING_MODULE: fffff8000305d000 nt DEBUG_FLR_IMAGE_TIMESTAMP: 4b88cfeb BUGCHECK_STR: 0x7f_8 CUSTOMER_CRASH_COUNT: 1 DEFAULT_BUCKET_ID: VISTA_DRIVER_FAULT CURRENT_IRQL: 0 LAST_CONTROL_TRANSFER: from fffff800030ccb69 to fffff800030cd600 STACK_TEXT: fffff80004d6fd28 fffff800030ccb69 : 000000000000007f 0000000000000008 0000000080050033 00000000000006f8 : nt+0x70600 fffff80004d6fd30 000000000000007f : 0000000000000008 0000000080050033 00000000000006f8 fffff80003095e58 : nt+0x6fb69 fffff80004d6fd38 0000000000000008 : 0000000080050033 00000000000006f8 fffff80003095e58 0000000000000000 : 0x7f fffff80004d6fd40 0000000080050033 : 00000000000006f8 fffff80003095e58 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 : 0x8 fffff80004d6fd48 00000000000006f8 : fffff80003095e58 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 : 0x80050033 fffff80004d6fd50 fffff80003095e58 : 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 : 0x6f8 fffff80004d6fd58 0000000000000000 : 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 : nt+0x38e58 STACK_COMMAND: kb FOLLOWUP_IP: nt+70600 fffff800`030cd600 48894c2408 mov qword ptr [rsp+8],rcx SYMBOL_STACK_INDEX: 0 SYMBOL_NAME: nt+70600 FOLLOWUP_NAME: MachineOwner IMAGE_NAME: ntoskrnl.exe BUCKET_ID: WRONG_SYMBOLS Followup: MachineOwner ...................................................................... 0: kd !lmi nt Loaded Module Info: [nt] Module: ntkrnlmp Base Address: fffff8000305d000 Image Name: ntkrnlmp.exe Machine Type: 34404 (X64) Time Stamp: 4b88cfeb Sat Feb 27 00:55:23 2010 Size: 5dc000 CheckSum: 545094 Characteristics: 22 perf Debug Data Dirs: Type Size VA Pointer CODEVIEW 25, 19c65c, 19bc5c RSDS - GUID: {7E9A3CAB-6268-45DE-8E10-816E3080A3B7} Age: 2, Pdb: ntkrnlmp.pdb CLSID 4, 19c658, 19bc58 [Data not mapped] Image Type: FILE - Image read successfully from debugger. ntkrnlmp.exe Symbol Type: PDB - Symbols loaded successfully from symbol server. d:\debugsymbols\ntkrnlmp.pdb\7E9A3CAB626845DE8E10816E3080A3B72\ntkrnlmp.pdb Load Report: public symbols , not source indexed d:\debugsymbols\ntkrnlmp.pdb\7E9A3CAB626845DE8E10816E3080A3B72\ntkrnlmp.pdb 0: kd !analyze -v * Bugcheck Analysis * * UNEXPECTED_KERNEL_MODE_TRAP (7f) This means a trap occurred in kernel mode, and it's a trap of a kind that the kernel isn't allowed to have/catch (bound trap) or that is always instant death (double fault). The first number in the bugcheck params is the number of the trap (8 = double fault, etc) Consult an Intel x86 family manual to learn more about what these traps are. Here is a portion of those codes: If kv shows a taskGate use .tss on the part before the colon, then kv. Else if kv shows a trapframe use .trap on that value Else .trap on the appropriate frame will show where the trap was taken (on x86, this will be the ebp that goes with the procedure KiTrap) Endif kb will then show the corrected stack. Arguments: Arg1: 0000000000000008, EXCEPTION_DOUBLE_FAULT Arg2: 0000000080050033 Arg3: 00000000000006f8 Arg4: fffff80003095e58 Debugging Details: BUGCHECK_STR: 0x7f_8 CUSTOMER_CRASH_COUNT: 1 DEFAULT_BUCKET_ID: VISTA_DRIVER_FAULT PROCESS_NAME: System CURRENT_IRQL: 2 LAST_CONTROL_TRANSFER: from fffff800030ccb69 to fffff800030cd600 STACK_TEXT: fffff80004d6fd28 fffff800030ccb69 : 000000000000007f 0000000000000008 0000000080050033 00000000000006f8 : nt!KeBugCheckEx fffff80004d6fd30 fffff800030cb032 : 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 : nt!KiBugCheckDispatch+0x69 fffff80004d6fe70 fffff80003095e58 : 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 : nt!KiDoubleFaultAbort+0xb2 fffff880089efc60 0000000000000000 : 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 : nt!SeAccessCheckFromState+0x58 STACK_COMMAND: kb FOLLOWUP_IP: nt!KiDoubleFaultAbort+b2 fffff800`030cb032 90 nop SYMBOL_STACK_INDEX: 2 SYMBOL_NAME: nt!KiDoubleFaultAbort+b2 FOLLOWUP_NAME: MachineOwner MODULE_NAME: nt IMAGE_NAME: ntkrnlmp.exe DEBUG_FLR_IMAGE_TIMESTAMP: 4b88cfeb FAILURE_BUCKET_ID: X64_0x7f_8_nt!KiDoubleFaultAbort+b2 BUCKET_ID: X64_0x7f_8_nt!KiDoubleFaultAbort+b2 Followup: MachineOwner I tried running Rootkit Revealer but I don't think it works on x64 systems. Similarly Blacklight seems to have aged off. I'm running Sophos Anti-Rootkit now. So far so good...

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• PHP install sqlite3 extension

  - by Kevin

  We are using PHP 5.3.6 here, but we used the --without-sqlite3 command when compiling PHP. (It stands in the 'Configure Command' column). But, it is very risky to recompile PHP on that server; there are many visitors. How can we install/use sqlite3? Regards, Kevin [EDIT] yum repolist gives: Loaded plugins: fastestmirror Loading mirror speeds from cached hostfile * base: mirror.nl.leaseweb.net * extras: mirror.nl.leaseweb.net * updates: mirror.nl.leaseweb.net repo id repo name status base CentOS-5 - Base 3,566 extras CentOS-5 - Extras 237 updates CentOS-5 - Updates 376 repolist: 4,179 rpm -qa | grep php gives: php-pdo-5.3.6-1.w5 php-mysql-5.3.6-1.w5 psa-php5-configurator-1.5.3-cos5.build95101022.10 php-mbstring-5.3.6-1.w5 php-imap-5.3.6-1.w5 php-cli-5.3.6-1.w5 php-gd-5.3.6-1.w5 php-5.3.6-1.w5 php-common-5.3.6-1.w5 php-xml-5.3.6-1.w5 php -i | grep sqlite gives: PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable to load dynamic library '/usr/lib64/php/modules/sqlite3.so' - /usr/lib64/php/modules/sqlite3.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory in Unknown on line 0 Configure Command => './configure' '--build=x86_64-redhat-linux-gnu' '--host=x86_64-redhat-linux-gnu' '--target=x86_64-redhat-linux-gnu' '--program-prefix=' '--prefix=/usr' '--exec-prefix=/usr' '--bindir=/usr/bin' '--sbindir=/usr/sbin' '--sysconfdir=/etc' '--datadir=/usr/share' '--includedir=/usr/include' '--libdir=/usr/lib64' '--libexecdir=/usr/libexec' '--localstatedir=/var' '--sharedstatedir=/usr/com' '--mandir=/usr/share/man' '--infodir=/usr/share/info' '--cache-file=../config.cache' '--with-libdir=lib64' '--with-config-file-path=/etc' '--with-config-file-scan-dir=/etc/php.d' '--disable-debug' '--with-pic' '--disable-rpath' '--without-pear' '--with-bz2' '--with-exec-dir=/usr/bin' '--with-freetype-dir=/usr' '--with-png-dir=/usr' '--with-xpm-dir=/usr' '--enable-gd-native-ttf' '--without-gdbm' '--with-gettext' '--with-gmp' '--with-iconv' '--with-jpeg-dir=/usr' '--with-openssl' '--with-pcre-regex=/usr' '--with-zlib' '--with-layout=GNU' '--enable-exif' '--enable-ftp' '--enable-magic-quotes' '--enable-sockets' '--enable-sysvsem' '--enable-sysvshm' '--enable-sysvmsg' '--with-kerberos' '--enable-ucd-snmp-hack' '--enable-shmop' '--enable-calendar' '--without-mime-magic' '--without-sqlite' '--without-sqlite3' '--with-libxml-dir=/usr' '--enable-xml' '--with-system-tzdata' '--enable-force-cgi-redirect' '--enable-pcntl' '--with-imap=shared' '--with-imap-ssl' '--enable-mbstring=shared' '--enable-mbregex' '--with-gd=shared' '--enable-bcmath=shared' '--enable-dba=shared' '--with-db4=/usr' '--with-xmlrpc=shared' '--with-ldap=shared' '--with-ldap-sasl' '--with-mysql=shared,/usr' '--with-mysqli=shared,/usr/bin/mysql_config' '--enable-dom=shared' '--with-pgsql=shared' '--enable-wddx=shared' '--with-snmp=shared,/usr' '--enable-soap=shared' '--with-xsl=shared,/usr' '--enable-xmlreader=shared' '--enable-xmlwriter=shared' '--with-curl=shared,/usr' '--enable-fastcgi' '--enable-pdo=shared' '--with-pdo-odbc=shared,unixODBC,/usr' '--with-pdo-mysql=shared,/usr' '--with-pdo-pgsql=shared,/usr' '--with-pdo-sqlite=shared,/usr' '--with-pdo-dblib=shared,/usr' '--enable-json=shared' '--enable-zip=shared' '--with-readline' '--with-pspell=shared' '--enable-phar=shared' '--with-mcrypt=shared,/usr' '--with-tidy=shared,/usr' '--with-mssql=shared,/usr' '--enable-sysvmsg=shared' '--enable-sysvshm=shared' '--enable-sysvsem=shared' '--enable-posix=shared' '--with-unixODBC=shared,/usr' '--enable-fileinfo=shared' '--enable-intl=shared' '--with-icu-dir=/usr' '--with-recode=shared,/usr' /etc/php.d/pdo_sqlite.ini, /etc/php.d/sqlite3.ini, PHP Warning: Unknown: It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings. You are *required* to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set() function. In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier. We selected 'Europe/Berlin' for 'CET/1.0/no DST' instead in Unknown on line 0 PDO drivers => mysql, sqlite pdo_sqlite PWD => /root/sqlite _SERVER["PWD"] => /root/sqlite _ENV["PWD"] => /root/sqlite

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• Single-Signon options for Exchange 2010

  - by freiheit

  We're working on a project to migrate employee email from Unix/open-source (courier IMAP, exim, squirrelmail, etc) to Exchange 2010, and trying to figure out options for single-signon for Outlook Web Access. So far all the options I've found are very ugly and "unsupportable", and may simply not work with Forefront. We already have JA-SIG CAS for token-based single-signon and Shibboleth for SAML. Users are directed to a simple in-house portal (a Perl CGI, really) that they use to sign in to most stuff. We have an HA OpenLDAP cluster that's already synchronized against another AD domain and will be synchronized with the AD domain Exchange will be using. CAS authenticates against LDAP. The portal authenticates against CAS. Shibboleth authenticates with CAS but pulls additional data from LDAP. We're moving in the direction of having web services authenticate against CAS or Shibboleth. (Students are already on SAML/Shibboleth authenticated Google Apps for Education) With Squirrelmail we have a horrible hack linked to from that portal page that authenticates against CAS, gets your original plaintext password (yes, I know, evil), and gives you an HTTP form pre-filled with all the necessary squirrelmail login details with javaScript onLoad stuff to immediately submit the form. Trying to find out exactly what is possible with Exchange/OWA seems to be difficult. "CAS" is both the acronym for our single-signon server and an Exchange component. From what I've been able to tell there's an addon for Exchange that does SAML, but only for federating things like free/busy calendar info, not authenticating users. Plus it costs additional money so there's no way to experiment with it to see if it can be coaxed into doing what we want. Our plans for the Exchange cluster involve Forefront Threat Management Gateway (the new ISA) in the DMZ front-ending the CAS servers. So, the real question: Has anybody managed to make Exchange authenticate with CAS (token-based single-signon) or SAML, or with something I can reasonably likely make authenticate with one of those (such as anything that will accept apache's authentication)? With Forefront? Failing that, anybody have some tips on convincing OWA Forms Based Authentication (FBA) into letting us somehow "pre-login" the user? (log in as them and pass back cookies to the user, or giving the user a pre-filled form that autosubmits like we do with squirrelmail). This is the least-favorite option for a number of reasons, but it would (just barely) satisfy our requirements. From what I hear from the guy implementing Forefront, we may have to set OWA to basic authentication and do forms in Forefront for authentication, so it's possible this isn't even possible. I did find CasOwa, but it only mentions Exchange 2007, looks kinda scary, and as near as I can tell is mostly the same OWA FBA hack I was considering slightly more integrated with the CAS server. It also didn't look like many people had had much success with it. And it may not work with Forefront. There's also "CASifying Outlook Web Access 2", but that one scares me, too, and involves setting up a complex proxy config, which seems more likely to break. And, again, doesn't look like it would work with Forefront. Am I missing something with Exchange SAML (OWA Federated whatchamacallit) where it is possible to configure to do user authentication and not just free/busy access authorization?

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• Disable error_log. Error_log flooding

  - by user36646

  Hello, i got an webserver running and old version of gambio (xt:commerce fork). The error_log in the dir over the public_html is flooding with errors. About 30mb in 15min. How can I disable this log? I can't fix all the errors. Here are a few examples of the errors: [warn] mod_fcgid: stderr: PHP Notice: Undefined variable: key in /usr/www/users/foo//includes/classes/class.inputfilter.php on line 98 [warn] mod_fcgid: stderr: PHP Notice: Undefined index: in /usr/www/users/foo/templ [warn] mod_fcgid: stderr: in /usr/www/users/foo/templates/gambio/source/inc/xtc_show_category_sectionc.inc.php on line 47 They are all errors of: "mod_fcgid: stderr". I tried to grep "error_log" and "error_report" in the public html dir, but i did not find anything. Here is a part from the phpinfo(): PHP Version 4.4.9 System Linux foobar.com 2.6.26-2-686-bigmem #1 SMP Sat Dec 26 09:26:36 UTC 2009 i686 Build Date Feb 11 2010 13:00:33 Configure Command './configure' '--prefix=/usr/local/php4' '--with-config-file-path=/etc/php4/cgi' '--with-gd' '--with-jpeg-dir' '--with-png-dir' '--with-tiff-dir' '--with-ttf' '--enable-force-cgi-redirect' '--enable-safe-mode' '--with-zlib' '--enable-ftp' '--enable-url-includes' '--enable-gd-native-ttf' '--enable-trans-sid' '--enable-dbase' '--with-db4' '--with-ldap' '--enable-bcmath' '--enable-calendar' '--enable-memory-limit' '--with-mcal=/usr' '--with-bz2' '--with-mod-dav' '--enable-sockets' '--with-kerberos' '--with-imap-ssl' '--enable-gd-imgstrttf' '--with-freetype-dir' '--with-curl' '--with-mysql' '--with-mhash' '--with-gdbm' '--with-pgsql' '--with-gettext' '--with-xml' '--with-mcrypt' '--with-openssl' '--with-dom' '--without-pear' '--enable-exif' '--with-zip' '--enable-wddx' '--disable-cli' '--enable-fastcgi' '--with-imap' '--enable-xslt' '--with-xslt-sablot=/usr/local/lib' '--enable-mbstring' '--with-dom-xslt' '--with-dom-exslt' Server API CGI/FastCGI Virtual Directory Support disabled Configuration File (php.ini) Path /home/httpd/php-ini/foo/php.ini PHP API 20020918 PHP Extension 20020429 Zend Extension 20050606 Debug Build no Zend Memory Manager enabled Thread Safety disabled Registered PHP Streams php, http, ftp, https, ftps, compress.bzip2, compress.zlib **Configuration PHP Core** Directive Local Value Master Value allow_call_time_pass_reference On On allow_url_fopen Off Off always_populate_raw_post_data Off Off arg_separator.input & & arg_separator.output & & asp_tags Off Off auto_append_file no value no value auto_prepend_file no value no value browscap no value no value default_charset no value no value default_mimetype text/html text/html define_syslog_variables Off Off disable_classes no value no value disable_functions no value no value display_errors On On display_startup_errors Off Off doc_root no value no value docref_ext no value no value docref_root no value no value enable_dl On On error_append_string no value no value error_log no value no value error_prepend_string no value no value error_reporting 2039 2039 expose_php On On extension_dir /usr/local/php4/lib/php/extensions/no-debug-non-zts-20020429 /usr/local/php4/lib/php/extensions/no-debug-non-zts-20020429 file_uploads On On gpc_order GPC GPC highlight.bg #FFFFFF #FFFFFF highlight.comment #FF8000 #FF8000 highlight.default #0000BB #0000BB highlight.html #000000 #000000 highlight.keyword #007700 #007700 highlight.string #DD0000 #DD0000 html_errors On On ignore_repeated_errors Off Off ignore_repeated_source Off Off ignore_user_abort Off Off implicit_flush Off Off include_path .:/usr/local/lib/php/ .:/usr/local/lib/php/ log_errors Off Off log_errors_max_len 1024 1024 magic_quotes_gpc On On magic_quotes_runtime Off Off magic_quotes_sybase Off Off max_execution_time 120 120 max_input_nesting_level 500 500 max_input_time -1 -1 memory_limit 128000000 128000000 open_basedir /usr/www/users/foo:/usr/home/foo:/tmp:/usr/local/lib/php:/usr/local/rmagic:/usr/www/users/he/_system_ /usr/www/users/foo:/usr/home/foo:/tmp:/usr/local/lib/php:/usr/local/rmagic:/usr/www/users/he/_system_ output_buffering no value no value output_handler no value no value post_max_size 128000000 128000000 precision 14 14 register_argc_argv On On register_globals Off Off report_memleaks On On safe_mode Off Off safe_mode_exec_dir no value no value safe_mode_gid Off Off safe_mode_include_dir no value no value sendmail_from no value no value sendmail_path /usr/sbin/sendmail -t /usr/sbin/sendmail -t serialize_precision 100 100 short_open_tag On On SMTP localhost localhost smtp_port 25 25 sql.safe_mode Off Off track_errors Off Off unserialize_callback_func no value no value upload_max_filesize 128000000 128000000 upload_tmp_dir /usr/foo/foo/.tmp /usr/foo/.tmp user_dir no value no value variables_order EGPCS EGPCS xmlrpc_error_number 0 0 xmlrpc_errors Off Off y2k_compliance Off Off

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• Strange Upload Problem on Hyper-V

  - by Ring0

  Hi, This one is driving me totally nuts. I have being trying to upload a file to www.virustotal.com (its a harmless exe I have since found out - DiskWipe.exe from diskwipe.org). Using IE8. From Win 7 and Win 2008 R2 Datacenter (which I select to boot from vhd's) onto my main machine hardware, and also on another Win 7 PC elsewhere on my network, when I upload the file to virustotal.com it works perfectly. So, using my native NIC's everything is fine. Using another machine also perfect. Right. OK, from my boot menu the default is my main development machine - the one I'm typing on now. This runs on the metal and has Hyper-V role and I have some guests. All guests are not running. Amazingly, from my console (root partition to be exact) or any guest OS 2003 /XP / 2008 R2 etc. My upload to virustotal.com slows at 32% then HANGS at 38.something% & never finishes!! Here is the kicker. I have another box (my main server) running Hyper-V on the metal and three live guests. Identical H/W to my main dev machine in another room. (Except OS is Datacenter - Mine is Enterprise). If I try and upload from its bare metal console or any guest this file to virustotal.com using IE8 it stops exactly in the same place!! As for "steps I have tried etc." are kind-of blown out of the water as my server box is doing the precise same thing as the machine in my room here. OK, comonalities: Mobo: Gigabyte GA-X58-UD5, 12GB Kingston RAM, Corei7 920 4 cores hyperthreading = 8 & Realtek RTL8168D/8111D Family PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet NIC's. All 3 machines have this same motherboard - revision F11 Bios, all have 12GB RAM, all have the Realtek Nic's. All x64 by the way as I mentioned before I have a Win 7 box also with the UD5 m/Board, 12 GB RAM - bit of an overkill. :-) All these machines when NOT running Hyper-V can upload this file. Perhaps you may like to try it on a Hyepr-v (2008 R2) yourselves with IE8 and the desktop experience is on. See if it works or fails for you. Root OS or any guest. So, looking like its the NIC + Hyper-V = Cannot upload this file (any file I must add.) Realtek Nic is Ver 7.002.1125.2008. Using IE8 I see in the nic settings there are the usual parameters for Jumbo frames / Checksum offloading etc. several others. Should I fiddle with these? I ran Netmon 3.3 in a guest and the TCP session halted as the upload failed. I suppose I could study that further. I dont have Netmon on the root partition machine (yet)! All OS's fully patched - including todays defender files. My box running Office 2007 - but identical server in another room is not. Also, if I fire up a VPN to a distant client and do the upload it works! Of course its a different network path. Suggestions welcome please. If I left out anything important - please yell at me. Many Thanks,

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• Bridged virtual interface is not available or visible to ifconfig.

  - by Omniwombat

  Hello all. I'm running Ubuntu 9.04, kernel 2.6.28-18, and vmware-server 2.0.1. I'm attempting to setup a virtual linux machine to use a bridged interface rather than NAT or host-only. Both NAT and host-only work just fine. When running vmware-config.pl, I set /dev/vmnet0 to bridge eth0, /dev/vmnet1 to host-only, and /dev/vmnet8 to NAT. When I run ifconfig -a I see the physical interface (eth0), vmnet1 and vmnet8 both of which are up and have IP addresses assigned to them. I also see other various interfaces that are not relevant here. In the web console, when I ask that the guest machine's network card be bridged, it states that a bridged setup is "Not available" and shows the disabled device icon. Inside the guest machine, I do have an eth0 interface which I can set to anything I like, however it can't see my external network, or the host. I do see errors in my vmware/hostd.log which state: "The network bridge on device vmnet0 is not running. The virtual machine will not be able to communicate with the host or with other machines on your network" which confirms the problem. vmnet-bridge is running, and I see the following in my process table: /usr/bin/vmnet-bridge -d /var/run/vmnet-bridge-0.pid -n 0 -i eth0 I confirm that the /var/run/vmnet-bridge-0.pid file is there and that it points to the correct process. I saw this question relating to Ubuntu 9.04 and bridged interfaces, in which the poster determined that the vsock library was not getting built due to a flaw in the vmware-config.pl script. I applied the patch, reran the script, and confirm that vsock.ko and vsock.o are in my /lib directory structure. vsock does show up in an lsmod. My /etc/vmware directory has /vmnet1 and /vmnet8 subdirectories. They contain configuration utilities for running DHCP and nat type services as expected. There is no vmnet0 subdirectory. My /etc/vmware/netmap.conf file DOES show entries for vmnet0; both the name and the device as I configured it from the script. My /dev directory contains devices vmnet0 through vmnet9. They have major device number 119, and minor device numbers 0 through 9. /proc/net/dev shows statistics for vmnet1 and vmnet8, but not vmnet0. I have a /proc/vmnet directory, but it's empty. When I start or stop the vmware service with /etc/init.d/vmware start, I see the following: Starting VMware services: Virtual machine monitor done Virtual machine communication interface done VM communication interface socket family: done Virtual ethernet done Bridged networking on /dev/vmnet0 done Host-only networking on /dev/vmnet1 (background) done DHCP server on /dev/vmnet1 done Host-only networking on /dev/vmnet8 (background) done DHCP server on /dev/vmnet8 done NAT service on /dev/vmnet8 done VMware Server Authentication Daemon (background) done Shared Memory Available done Starting VMware management services: VMware Server Host Agent (background) done VMware Virtual Infrastructure Web Access Starting VMware autostart virtual machines: Virtual machines done Nothing appears to be wrong there. What n00b thing am I doing such that vmnet0 and only vmnet0 does not show up in the interface list?

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• iCloud stuff stops working while connected to OpenVPN

  - by Taco Bob

  I have a fairly simple OpenVPN setup on an OpenVZ VPS with Ubuntu 11.10. Client is the Viscosity client on Mac OS X 10.8.2, and after some testing, we can rule out the client as being part of the problem. Everything has been working fine except for Apple's iCloud stuff. Web surfing, email, FTP, NNTP, and Skype are all working as expected. It's ONLY the iCloud services that cease to function. If I connect to the VPN, iCloud stuff stops working. I no longer get anything in Messages, Calendar items don't get updated, and Notifications stop working. If I disconnect, the iCloud stuff all starts working. Connect again, iCloud stops working. Here's the server.conf: status openvpn-status.log log /var/log/openvpn.log verb 4 port 1194 proto udp dev tun ca /etc/openvpn/ca.crt cert /etc/openvpn/server.crt key /etc/openvpn/server.key dh /etc/openvpn/dh1024.pem server 10.9.8.0 255.255.255.0 ifconfig-pool-persist ipp.txt push "redirect-gateway def1" push “dhcp-option DNS 10.9.8.1? keepalive 10 120 duplicate-cn cipher BF-CBC comp-lzo user nobody group nogroup persist-key persist-tun tun-mtu 1500 mssfix 1400 I'm using iptables in a script, and it's also fairly simplistic. iptables -F iptables -t nat -F iptables -t mangle -F iptables -A FORWARD -i tun0 -o venet0 -j ACCEPT iptables -A FORWARD -i venet0 -o tun0 -j ACCEPT iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 22 -j ACCEPT iptables -A INPUT -p tcp --dport 1194 -j ACCEPT iptables -A INPUT -p udp --dport 1194 -j ACCEPT iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -s 10.9.8.0/24 -j SNAT --to-source <server's public ip> echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward I tried forwarding ports as well, with no success. iptables -A FORWARD -p tcp -d 10.9.8.0/24 --dport 5222:5230 -j ACCEPT iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -p tcp --dport 5222:5230 -j DNAT --to-destination 10.9.8.6 I am also sometimes behind a double-NAT situation that I have no control over. Client -> work VPN -> my OpenVPN box -> Internet. Client -> Airport Express -> ISP (which is doing NAT) -> my OpenVPN box -> Internet. Those two situations are just the fact of life where I am, and I cannot change them. I do have full control over my client and the OpenVPN server. I am completely out of ideas. I have posted a similar query at the OpenVPN forums, but it hasn't posted yet and seems to be in their moderation queue still. Tried on freenode irc channels, but nobody is awake, so here I am. I have Googled extensively for this, and can find nothing that is related. Help me get iCloud stuff working again! (I tried serverfault, it was closed as off-topic. I'm trying here and the Unix site as well. Here because it's a more general audience that might know more about OpenVPN based on the number of questions I see asked about it) EDIT: -I have also tried upgrading to Version: 2.3-beta1-debian0 - issue persists. -Removed all iptables rules except for the ones that flush -left this rule:iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -s 10.9.8.0/24 -j SNAT --to-source (server ip) -added iptables -A FORWARD -m state --state RELATED,ESTABLISHED -j ACCEPT still, nothing works. I can see traffic in tcpdump on the server if i watch the tunnel: 20:03:48.702835 IP nk11p01st-courier105-bz.push.apple.com.5223 10.9.8.6.60772: Flags [F.], seq 2635, ack 1218, win 76, options [nop,nop,TS val 914984811 ecr 745921298], length 0 20:03:48.911244 IP 10.9.8.6.60772 nk11p01st-courier105-bz.push.apple.com.5223: Flags [R], seq 3621143451, win 0, length 0 But still, no push messages/notifications are ever delivered. :/ EDIT: * Further testing indicates that it might actually be the client after all.

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• How do I resolve "conflicting accounts" in google apps without breaking links to online photos on picasa?

  - by lee

  I have been using google apps for some time, and only recently learned I have what google calls "conflicting accounts" which is creating a problem I haven't been able to resolve. Turns out that the apps account really only covers email, google docs, and the calendar and not other features like picasa, blogger, youtube etc. and at some point they gave me a non-apps google account with my same (proprietary non-gmail) email address for the additional apps. This is the "conflicting account." I had noticed that I sometimes had to come in through another door when I went back and forth, between docs, picasa, and mail let's say, but never understood why since it was the same username and password and I didn't get any communication about it at the time. Google is now in the process of giving google apps users access to the additional apps and providing instructions for consolidating the two accounts. But if I want to move my picasa site into the new apps structure I have to download my albums and re-synch them. This would be disastrous for me as I have hundreds of photos embedded in my websites, and new web addresses would break all the connections. The alternative seems to be to rename my "personal" (non-apps) accounts as described at http://www.google.com/support/a/bin/answer.py?answer=185186: Users with conflicting Google Accounts can easily resolve their conflicts by renaming their personal Google Accounts, and the data in their personal accounts will remain safe and accessible to them. Here’s how a user can rename their personal Google Account: * Step 1: Visit www.google.com/accounts and sign in with your personal Google Account * Step 2: Click ‘Change email’ under ‘Personal Settings’ * Step 3: Enter a different email address where you can receive mail, enter your password, and click ‘Save email address’ * Step 4: Check your other email If your users don’t have different email addresses where they can receive mail, they can resolve the conflict by renaming their personal Google Accounts to @gmail.com addresses instead. Sounds easy enough, right? I gave them a gmail address. The wizard said "sorry you can't use a gmail account for this" --which contradicts the last paragraph above but ok, I switched to a new email address I just created for one of my domains. I can send email back and forth between this account and my google apps account with no problem. But when I try to use it as a replacement on the "personal" side I always get "The password you gave is incorrect." I have tried it over and over and know the password is correct. Since I like to get all my emails though one web interface I initially had the new email set up as an add-on to my google apps email account, but noting that the instructions said the "personal account" email could not be associated with any other gmail account I took it off and went back to accessing it via horde so there would be no conflict there, which seemed to make no difference. I can't figure out why it won't accept the password. Does anyone have any thoughts about that? or suggestions for another way to resolve my picasa problem? any help at all is greatly appreciated. Lee

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• Why are USB 2.0 devices crashing my system?

  - by BenAlabaster

  Background on the machine I'm having a problem with: The machine was inherited and appears to be circa 2003 (there's a date stamp on the power supply which leads me to this conclusion). I've got it set up as a Skype terminal for my 2 year old to keep in touch with her grandparents and other members of the family - which everyone loves. It has a generic baby-ATX motherboard with no identifying markings. CPU-Z identifies the motherboard model as VT8601 but doesn't provide me with any manufacturer name. There's one stamp on the motherboard that says "Rev.B". On board it has 10/100 LAN, 2 x USB 1.0, VGA, PS/2 for KB and mouse, parallel port, 2 x serial ports, 2 x IDE, 1 x floppy, 2 x SDRAM slots, 1 x CPU housing that is seating a 1.3GHz Intel Celeron CPU, 3 x PCI, 1 x AGP - although you can only use 2 of the PCI slots if you use the AGP slot due to the physical layout of the board. It's got 768Mb PC133 SDRAM - 1 x 512Mb & 1 x 256Mb installed as well as a D-LINK WDA-2320 54G Wi-Fi network card and a generic USB 2.0 expansion board containing 3 x external + 1 x internal USB connectors. All this is sitting in a slimline case. I don't know the wattage of the PSU, but can post this later if this proves to be helpful. The motherboard is running a version of Award BIOS for which I don't have the version number to hand but can again post this later if it would be helpful. It has an 80Gb Western Digital hard drive freshly formatted and built with Windows XP Professional with Service Pack 3 and all current patches. In addition to Windows XP, the only other software it's running is Skype 4.1 (4.2 crashes the machine as soon as it starts up). It's got a Daytek MV150 15" touch screen running through the VGA and COM1 with the most current drivers from the Daytek website and the most current version of ELO-Touchsystems drivers for the touch component. The webcam is a Logitech Webcam C200 with the latest drivers from the Logitech website. The problem If I hook any USB 2.0 devices to this machine, it hangs the whole machine and I have to hard boot it to get it back up. Workarounds found I can plug the same devices into the on board USB 1.0 connectors and everything works fine, albeit at reduced performance. I've tried 3 different kinds of USB thumb drives, 3 different makes/models of webcams and my iPhone all with the same effect. They're recognized and don't hang the machine when I hook them to the USB 1.0 but if I hook them to the USB 2.0 ports, the machine hangs within a couple of seconds of recognizing the devices were connected. Attempted solutions I've tried disabling all the on board devices that I'm not using - such as the on board LAN, the second COM port, the AGP connector etc. through the BIOS in an (perhaps misguided or futile) attempt to reduce the power consumption... I don't think it had any effect but it didn't do any harm. I was wondering if the PSU wattage just isn't enough to drive the USB 2.0 devices; I've seen this suggested but haven't found any confirmation that this could really be an issue - nor have I found a way to work around this issue - if indeed it is one. Any ideas? The only thing I haven't done which I only just thought of while writing this essay is trying the USB 2.0 card in a different PCI slot, or re-ordering the wi-fi and USB cards in the slots... although I'm not sure if this will make any difference. I've installed the USB card in another machine and it works without issue, so it's not a problem with the USB card itself. Other thoughts Perhaps this is an incompatibility between the USB 2.0 card and the BIOS, would re-flashing the BIOS with a newer version help? Do I need to be able to identify the manufacturer of the motherboard in order to be able to find a BIOS edition specific for this motherboard or will any version of Award BIOS function in its place? Question Does anyone have any ideas that could help me get my USB 2.0 devices hooked up to this machine?

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• Samba doesnt require password on xbmc but does on ubuntu

  - by Chris

  I have samba setup on a fedora 13 machine, and I use it to share with my xbmc client in the family room. When I set this up there no password or anything was required I merely entered in paths such as: smb://<host>/<share> and all worked. Now on my ubuntu 10.04 machine when I try to access the same hosts, for example through smbmount though I receive an error. smbmount //media/Music ~/Music/ # media is in my /etc/hosts and resolves to # correct IP address for the machine I receive error: operation not permitted after pressing enter when it prompts for password. Here is my entry from /etc/samba/smb.conf: [global] workgroup = WORKGROUP server string = Samba Server Version %v # log files split per-machine: log file = /var/log/samba/log.%m # maximum size of 50KB per log file, then rotate: max log size = 50 security = user passdb backend = tdbsam ; security = domain ; passdb backend = tdbsam ; realm = MY_REALM ; password server = <NT-Server-Name> ; security = user ; passdb backend = tdbsam ; domain master = yes ; domain logons = yes ; logon script = %m.bat ; logon script = %u.bat ; logon path = \\%L\Profiles\%u ; logon path = ; add user script = /usr/sbin/useradd "%u" -n -g users ; add group script = /usr/sbin/groupadd "%g" ; add machine script = /usr/sbin/useradd -n -c "Workstation (%u)" -M -d /nohome -s /bin/false "%u" ; delete user script = /usr/sbin/userdel "%u" ; delete user from group script = /usr/sbin/userdel "%u" "%g" ; delete group script = /usr/sbin/groupdel "%g" ; local master = no ; os level = 33 ; preferred master = yes ; wins support = yes ; wins server = w.x.y.z ; wins proxy = yes ; dns proxy = yes load printers = yes cups options = raw ; printcap name = /etc/printcap # obtain a list of printers automatically on UNIX System V systems: ; printcap name = lpstat ; printing = cups ; map archive = no ; map hidden = no ; map read only = no ; map system = no ; store dos attributes = yes #============================ Share Definitions ============================== [homes] comment = Home Directories browseable = no writable = yes ; valid users = %S ; valid users = MYDOMAIN\%S # Un-comment the following and create the netlogon directory for Domain Logons: ; [netlogon] ; comment = Network Logon Service ; path = /var/lib/samba/netlogon ; guest ok = yes ; writable = no ; share modes = no # Un-comment the following to provide a specific roving profile share. # The default is to use the user's home directory: ; [Profiles] ; path = /var/lib/samba/profiles ; browseable = no ; guest ok = yes # A publicly accessible directory that is read only, except for users in the # "staff" group (which have write permissions): ; [public] ; comment = Public Stuff ; path = /home/samba ; public = yes ; writable = yes ; printable = no ; write list = +staff [tv] comment = TV path = /media/Isos/tv public = yes writable = yes printable = no write list = +media [music] comment = Music path = /media/Storage/music/ public = yes writable = yes printable = no write list = +media [pictures] comment = Pictures path = /media/Storage/pictures public = yes writable = yes printable = no write list = +media

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• VPS 512 MB RAM with WordPressMU comes to consumes lots of memory

  - by CAPitalZ

  I have googled for days and gathered all optimization suggestions and tried. My sites are not getting any high hits. May be like 100 hits per day [all my sites combined]. Here are my specs I have 512 MB RAM VPS with burstable 1024 MB. Centos 5 32-bit & cPanel/WHM Apache 2.2 MySQL 5.0 PHP 5.3.2 Here is my Configs I have 2 WordPressMU production sites, and 1 test site my.cnf # The following options will be passed to all MySQL clients [client] #password = your_password port = 3306 socket = /var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock # Here follows entries for some specific programs # The MySQL server [mysqld] port = 3306 socket = /var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock skip-locking skip-bdb skip-innodb key_buffer = 16M max_allowed_packet = 1M table_cache = 64 sort_buffer_size = 512K net_buffer_length = 8K read_buffer_size = 256K read_rnd_buffer_size = 512K myisam_sort_buffer_size = 8M #CAPitalZ thread_cache_size=8 thread_concurrency=4 #query_cache_type=1 #query_cache_limit=1M query_cache_size=16M concurrent_insert=2 low_priority_updates=1 max_connections=50 tmp_table_size=16M max_heap_table_size=16M join_buffer_size=1M interactive_timeout=25 wait_timeout=1000 #connect_timout=10 not able to restart mysql max_connect_errors=10 # Don't listen on a TCP/IP port at all. This can be a security enhancement, # if all processes that need to connect to mysqld run on the same host. # All interaction with mysqld must be made via Unix sockets or named pipes. # Note that using this option without enabling named pipes on Windows # (via the "enable-named-pipe" option) will render mysqld useless! # skip-networking # Disable Federated by default skip-federated # Replication Master Server (default) # binary logging is required for replication log-bin=mysql-bin # required unique id between 1 and 2^32 - 1 # defaults to 1 if master-host is not set # but will not function as a master if omitted server-id = 1 [mysqld_safe] open_files_limit=8192 [mysqldump] quick max_allowed_packet = 16M [mysql] no-auto-rehash # Remove the next comment character if you are not familiar with SQL #safe-updates [isamchk] key_buffer = 20M sort_buffer_size = 20M read_buffer = 2M write_buffer = 2M [myisamchk] key_buffer = 20M sort_buffer_size = 20M read_buffer = 2M write_buffer = 2M [mysqlhotcopy] interactive-timeout httpd.conf I have unselected many modules and recompiled using EasyApache in WHM. Only have the following modules built Deflate Expires Fileprotect Imagemap MPM Prefork Version [default] EAccelerator for PHP Bcmath Calendar CurlSSL [I'm using Curl. But I don't have any https sites] Expat GD [for image cropping] Gettext Imap Mbregex [default] Mbstring [need both Mbregex and Mbstring for utf-8] Mysql of the system MySQL "Improved" extension. Sockets TTF (FreeType) [I'm using custom font] Zlib Under Global Configuration I only have FollowSymLinks enabled I Have TraceEnable, ServerSignature, FileETag OFF ServerTokens ProductOnly DirectoryIndex Priority has index.php as the first one I have removed Clamd [Clam Anti-virus] SpamAssasin is Off Under Tweak Settings Default catch-all/default address behavior for new accounts. This is set to "fail" All stats programs turned off I have eAccelerator installed and checked in phpinfo and its working [Pre VirtualHost Include under WHM] Timeout 20 KeepAlive On MaxKeepAliveRequests 200 KeepAliveTimeout 3 MinSpareServers 1 MaxSpareServers 3 StartServers 1 ServerLimit 50 MaxClients 50 MaxRequestsPerChild 4000 ExtendedStatus Off #ServerType standalone this throws error HostnameLookups Off <Directory "/"> AllowOverride None </Directory> My sites will take ages to load and WHM/CPanel will not even load. adadaa.com/ http://adadaa.net/ kadais.ca/ My average memory consumption is like 1000 MB! [yes always bursting] The process that consumes most CPU and also most memory is mysql But I also get like 15 httpd processes [when its bursting] I already got warning from cpuwatchcheck saying "While processing, the cpu has been maxed out for more than a 6 hour period. The current load/uptime line on the server at the time of this email is 07:00:37 up 11:30, 0 users, load average: 14.64, 16.79, 20.07" I don't know, I have tried switching these config values many different times, but nothing seems to work. Please show some light... Thanks

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• Pushing DNSSEC updates with offline keys

  - by eggyal

  In a non-professional capacity, I look after the DNS of some 18 domains: mostly personal/vanity domains for immediate family. I outsource the whole shebang to an inexpensive managed hosting provider with a web interface through which I manage the zones; since the provider also offers DNSSEC, I have successfully deployed that too. These domains are so unimportant that an attack targetted against them seems much less likely than a general compromise of my provider's systems, at which point the records of all their customers might be changed to misdirect traffic (perhaps with extremely long TTLs). DNSSEC could protect against such an attack, but only if the zone's private keys are not held by the hosting provider. So, I wonder: how can one keep DNSSEC private keys offline yet still transfer signed zones to an outsourced DNS host? The most obvious answer (to me, at least) is to run one's own shadow/hidden master (from which the provider can slave) and then copy offline-signed zonefiles to the master as required. The problem is that the only machine I (want to*) control is my personal laptop, which usually connects from a typical home ADSL (behind NAT over a dynamically-assigned IP address). Having them slave from that (e.g. with a very long Expiry time on the zone for periods when my laptop is offline/unavailable) would not only require a Dynamic DNS record from which they can slave (if indeed they can slave from a named host rather than a static IP address), but would also involve me running a DNS server on my laptop and opening both it and my home network up to the incoming zone transfer requests: not ideal. I would prefer a much more push-oriented design, whereby my laptop initiates transfer of offline-signed zonefiles/updates to the provider's servers. I looked into whether nsupdate could fit the bill: documentation is a little sketchy, but my testing (with BIND 9.7) suggests it can indeed update DNSSEC zones, but only where the server holds the keys to perform the zone signing; I have not found a way to have it take an update including the relevant RRSIG/NSEC/etc. records and have the server accept them. Is this a supported use-case? If not, I suspect the only solutions which could fit the bill will involve non-DNS-based transfer of the zone updates and would welcome recommendations that are supported by (hopefully inexpensive) hosting providers: SFTP/SCP? rsync? RDBMS replication? Proprietary API? Finally, what would be the practical implications of such a setup? Key rotation is jumping out at me as being an obvious difficulty, especially if my laptop is offline for extended periods. But the zones are extremely stable, so perhaps I could get away with long-lived ZSKs**...? * Whilst I could run a shadow/hidden master on e.g. an outsourced VPS, I dislike the overhead of having to secure / manage / monitor / maintain yet another system; not to mention the additional financial costs of so doing. ** Okay, this would enable a concerted attacker to replay outdated records—but the risk and impact of such are both tolerable in the case of these domains.

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• Windows 8.1 Update 1 Disk Usage 100%

  - by Gookjin Jeong

  Background Information / Computer Specs I have a 14-inch Samsung Series 5 Ultra. Core i5 CPU, 750GB HDD, 8GB RAM, Intel HD Graphics 4000. I've had the computer for about 1.5 years with no major problems. Problem The issue appeared at the beginning of April this year, when I updated the OS to Windows 8.1 Update 1 (not from 8 to 8.1). After being on continually (except for at night, when I put it on sleep mode) for about 48 hours, the disk usage as seen by Task Manager hits 100%. When this happens, everything from opening/closing applications to typing and even bringing up the start screen by pressing the Windows key becomes extremely slow. The only way to make the disk usage decrease is to restart the computer. Then the problem repeats. I've used my current laptop (as well as my previous laptops) this way -- putting it on sleep mode at night and restarting it only when Windows needs to install updates -- for a long time. So I know the 100% disk usage is not due to the way I use the computer. The thing that causes the spike varies. Sometimes it's System, sometimes it's one of the various applications I installed (e.g. Chrome, Evernote, Spotify, Wunderlist, iTunes, etc.), and sometimes it's Antimalware Service Executable, etc. Tried Solutions I think I tried almost every solution out there for this problem: Running the check disk command (chkdsk /b /f /v /scan c:) from Admin Command Prompt Running Windows Memory Diagnostic Disabling Superfetch and Windows Search from services.msc Running "Fix problems with Windows Update" from Control Panel -- Troubleshooting Updating and rolling back the graphics driver (Intel HD 4000) Disabling "Use hardware acceleration when available" from Chrome settings Disabling Intel Rapid Storage Technology Running the SFC /SCANNOW command as recommended here Running a quick scan & a full scan from Windows Defender (no threats found) Taking the hard drive out and putting it back Refreshing the computer, from the Update and recovery -- Recovery option in Windows settings NONE of the above worked for me. I was about to give up but then noticed that one of the main culprits of the disk usage spike, as shown in the "Disk Activity" section of the Resource Monitor, was C:\System (pagefile.sys). I googled around and found that one of the recommended solutions was to disable pagefile. I then went to **Control Panel -- System and Security -- System -- Advanced system settings -- Advanced tab -- Performance settings -- Advanced tab -- "Change" under Virtual memory and discovered that the number for "Currently allocated" at the bottom was 1280MB, although the number for "Recommended" was 4533MB. I immediately changed it to 4533MB and checked my family members' computers to see what the numbers were like. All of theirs had a currently allocated space that was only slightly smaller than the recommended space. See screenshot below: This might fix the problem. I'll have to wait a couple more days.But if it doesn't, what in the world should I do next? I'm guessing the hard drive isn't failing because This computer is less than 2 years old; and Speccy says that the status of the HDD is good. Update 5/27/2014 The "4533MB" solution did not work. I had to reboot the computer about 30 minutes ago because the disk usage again hit 100%. When I opened Resource Monitor the C:\System (pagefile.sys) again was shown to be the culprit. I have now disabled pagefile entirely via the same window shown above in the screenshot. The number for "currently allocated" is now 0MB. Will update again in a couple days, or if the problem occurs again, whichever comes sooner.

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• What networking hardware do I need in this situation (Fairpoint [ISP] "E-DIA" connection)?

  - by Tegeril

  Right away you'd probably want to say, "Well just ask Fairpoint." I've done that, a number of times in as many different ways I can phrase it and just keep hitting a brick wall where they will not commit to giving any useful information and instead recommend contracting an outside firm and spending a pile of money. Anyway... I'm trying to help a family member out with an office connection that is being setup. I've managed to scrape tiny details here and there from our discussions with the ISP (Fairpoint in Maine) about what is going to be done and what is going to be needed. This is the connection that is being setup: http://www.fairpoint.com/enterprise/vantagepoint/e-dia/index.jsp Information I have been given: Via this connection I can get IPs across different C blocks if that were necessary (it is not) Fairpoint is bringing hardware with them that they claim simply does the conversion from whatever line is coming in the building to ethernet, they have referred to this as the "Fairpoint Netvanta" which I know suggests a line of products that I have looked up, but some (most? all?) of those seems to handle all the routing that I saw. Fairpoint says that I need to bring my own router to sit behind their device. They have literally declined to even suggest products that have worked for other clients in the past and fall back on "any business router works, not a home router." That alone makes my head spin. Detail and clarity hit a brick wall from there. At one moment I got them to cough up that the router I provide needs to be able to do VPN tunneling but they typically fall back to "not a home router" and I was even given "just a business router, Cisco or something, it'll be $500-$1000". Now I know that VPN tunneling routers exist well below that price point and since this connection is going to one machine, possibly two only via ethernet, my desire to purchase networking hardware that over-delivers what I need is not very high. They are literally setting all this up, have provided no configuration details for after they finish, and expect me to just plunk a $500+ router behind it and cross my fingers or contract out to a third party company. If there were other options available for the location, I would have dropped them in a second, but there aren't. The device that is connected requires a static IP and I'm honestly a bit hazy on the necessity of an additional router behind their device and generally a bit over my head. I presume that the router needs to be able to serve external static IPs to its clients, but I really don't know what is going to show up when they come to do the install. This was originally going to be run via an ADSL bridge modem with a range of static IPs (which is easy and is currently setup properly) but the location is too far from the telco to get speeds that we really want for upload and this is also a connection that needs high availability. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated (I see a number of options in the Cisco Small Business line and other competitors that aren't going to break the bank…), especially if you've worked with Fairpoint before! Thanks for reading my wall of text.

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• suddenly can't connect to router

  - by Khoi

  I was just downloading some stuff in ubuntu and snap, the connection cut and I can't even connect to my router. And the router, it still works fine, my laptop can connect wirelessly to it as usual. But my main computer (which connects to it directly through cable) can't even ping it. Here is my ipconfig: Windows IP Configuration Host Name . . . . . . . . . . . . : vento Primary Dns Suffix . . . . . . . : Node Type . . . . . . . . . . . . : Unknown IP Routing Enabled. . . . . . . . : No WINS Proxy Enabled. . . . . . . . : No Ethernet adapter Local Area Connection: Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Realtek RTL8169/8110 Family Gigabit Ethernet NIC Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-19-DB-4E-6C-56 Ethernet adapter {15B1F740-2F35-4FE4-9FEE-4052AFBAD096}: Media State . . . . . . . . . . . : Media disconnected Description . . . . . . . . . . . : Anchorfree HSS Adapter - Packet Sche duler Miniport Physical Address. . . . . . . . . : 00-FF-15-B1-F7-40

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• Our Look at Opera 10.50 Web Browser

  - by Asian Angel

  Everyone has been talking about the newest version of Opera recently but perhaps you have not looked at it too closely yet. Today we will take a look at 10.50 and let you see what this “new browser” is all about. The New Engines Carakan JavaScript Engine: Runs web applications up to 7 times faster than its predecessor Futhark Vega Graphics Library: Enables super fast and smooth graphics on everything from tab switching to webpage animation Presto 2.5: Provides support for HTML5, CSS2.1 and the latest CSS3 standards A Look at the Features Available If you have installed or used older versions of Opera before then the default look after a clean install will probably seem rather different. The main differences in appearance are mainly located within the “glass border” areas of the browser. The “Speed Dial” setup looks and works just as well as in previous versions. You can set a favorite wallpaper or image as your background and choose the number of “dials” using the “Configure Speed Dial Command”. One of the “standout” differences is the “O Button”. All of the menus have been condensed into this single access point but it only takes a few moments to find what you are looking for. If you have used the style before in earlier versions of Opera some of the items have been moved around. For those who prefer the “Menu Bar” that can be easily restored using the “Show Menu Bar Command”. If desired you can actually “extend” the “Tab Bar” downwards to display thumbnails of your open tabs. Just use your mouse to grab the bottom of the “Tab Bar” and adjust it to suit your personal needs. The only problem with this feature is that it will quickly use up a good sized portion of your available UI and browser window space. The “Password Manager” is ready to access when needed…the background for the button will turn a shiny metallic blue when you open a webpage that you have “Login Information” saved for. One of the new features is a small “Recycle Bin Button” in the upper right corner. Clicking on this will display a list of recently closed tabs letting you have easy access to any tabs that you may have accidentally closed. This is definitely a great feature to have as an easy access button. For those who were used to how the “Zoom Feature” looked before it has a new “look” to it. Instead of the pop-up menu-type listing of “view sizes” present before you now have a slider button that you can use to adjust the zooming level. For our default setup here the “Sidebar Panels” available were: “Bookmarks, Widgets, Unite, Notes, Downloads, History, & Panels”. Additional panels such as “Links, Windows, Search, Info, etc.” are available if you want and/or need them (accessible using the “Panels Plus Sign Button”). The “Opera Link Button” makes it easy for you to synchronize your “Speed Dial, Bookmarks, Personal Bar, Custom Searches, History & Notes”. Note: “Opera Link” requires an account and can be signed up for using the link provided below. Want to share files with your family and friends? “Unite” allows you to do that and more. With “Unite” you can: “Stream Music, Show Photo Galleries, Share Files and/or Folders, & host webpages directly from your browser”. We have a more in-depth look at “Unite” in our article here. Note: Use of “Unite” requires an Opera account. Got a slow internet connection? “Opera Turbo” can help with that by running the web traffic through their “compression servers” to speed up your web browsing. Keep in mind that “Opera Turbo” will not engage if you are accessing a secure website (i.e. your bank’s website) thus preserving your security. Note: “Opera Turbo” can be set up to automatically detect slow internet connections (i.e. crowded Wi-Fi in a cafe). Opera has a built-in “Private Browsing Mode” now for those who prefer anonymous browsing and want to keep the “history records clean” on their computer. To access it go to “Tabs and windows” and select “New private tab” or “New private window” as desired. When you open your new “Private Tab or Window” you will see the following message with details on how Opera will handle browsing information and a large “door hanger symbol”. Notice that the one tab is locked into “Private Browsing Mode” while the others are still working in “Regular Browsing Mode”. Very nice! A miniature version of the “door hanger symbol” will be present on any tab that is locked into “Private Browsing Mode”. If you are using Windows 7 then you will love how things look from your “Taskbar”. Here you can see four very nice looking thumbnails for the tabs that we had open. All that you have to do is click on the desired thumbnail… The “Context Menu” looks just as lovely as the thumbnails and definitely has some terrific functionality built into it. Add Enhanced Aero Capability If you love “Aero” and want more for your new Opera install then we have the perfect theme for you. The theme’s name is Z1-AV69 and once you have downloaded it you will need to place it in the “Skins Subfolder” in Opera’s “Program Files Folder”. Note: For our example we used version 1.10 but version 2.00 is now available (link provided below). Once you have restarted Opera, go to the “O Menu” and select “Appearance”. When the “Appearance Window” opens click on “Z1-Glass Skin” and then click “OK”. All of a sudden you will have more “Aero Goodness” to enjoy. Compare this screenshot with the one at the top of this article…the only part that is not transparent now is the browser window area itself. Want even more “Aero Goodness”? Right click on the “Tab Bar” and set “Tab Bar Placement” to “Left”. Note: You can achieve the same effect by setting the “Tab Bar Placement” to “Right”. With the “Speed Dial” visible you will be able to see your wallpaper with ease. While this is obviously not for everyone it does make for a great visual trick. Portable Versions Perhaps you need this wonderful new version of Opera to go with you wherever you do during the day. Not a problem…just visit the Opera USB website to choose a version that works best for you. You can select from “Zip or Exe” setup files and if needed update an older portable version using a “Zipped Update Files Package”. If you are updating an older version keep in mind that you will need to delete the old “OperaUSB.exe. File” due to changes with the new setup files. During our tests updating older portable versions went well for the most part but we did experience a few “odd UI quirks” here and there…so we recommend setting up a clean install if possible. Conclusion The new 10.50 release is a pleasure to use and is a recommended install for your system. Whether you are considering trying Opera for the first time or have been using it for a bit we think that you will pleased with everything that the 10.50 release has to offer. For those who would like to add User Scripts to Opera be certain to look at our how-to article here. Links Download Opera 10.50 for your location (Windows) Get the latest Snapshot versions for Linux & Mac Sign up for an Opera Link account View In-Depth detail on Opera 10.50’s features Download the Z1-AV69 Aero Theme Download Portable Opera 10.50 Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Set the Speed Dial as the Opera Startup PageSet Up User Scripts in Opera BrowserScan Files for Viruses Before You Download With Dr.WebTurn Your Computer into a File, Music, and Web Server with Opera UniteSet the Default Browser on Ubuntu From the Command Line TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Make your Joomla & Drupal Sites Mobile with OSMOBI Integrate Twitter and Delicious and Make Life Easier Design Your Web Pages Using the Golden Ratio Worldwide Growth of the Internet How to Find Your Mac Address Use My TextTools to Edit and Organize Text

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• Getting Started with Boxee

  - by DigitalGeekery

  Boxee is a free Media PC application that runs on Windows, Mac, and Ubuntu Linux. With Boxee, you can integrate online video, music and pictures, with your own local media and social networking. Today we are going to take a closer look at Boxee and some of it’s features. Note: We used Windows 7 for this tutorial. Your experience on a Mac or Ubuntu Linux build may vary slightly. Hardware Requirements x86 (Intel/AMD processor) based system running at 1.0GHz or greater 512MB system memory (RAM) or more Video card capable of OpenGL 1.4, Direct X 9.0 Software Requirements Mac OS X 10.4+ (Intel based processor) Ubuntu Linux 9.04+ x86 only Windows XP / Vista / 7 (64 bit in Vista or 7) Installing Boxee Before downloading and installing Boxee, you’ll need to register for a free account. (See link below) Once your account is registered and verified, you’ll be able to log in and download the application. Installation is pretty straightforward…just take the defaults. Boxee will open in full screen mode and you’ll be prompted to login with your username and password. Before you login, you may want to take a moment to click on the “Guide” icon and learn a bit about navigating in Boxee. Some basic keyboard navigation is as follows. Move right, left, up, & down with the arrow keys. Hit “Enter” to make a selection, the forward slash key “\” to toggle between full screen and windowed mode, and “Esc” to go back to the previous screen. For Playback, the volume is controlled by plus & minus (+/-) keys, you can Play / Pause using the spacebar, and skip using the arrow keys. Boxee will also work with any infrared remote. If you have an iPhone or iPod Touch you can download software to enable them as a Boxee remote. If you’re using a mouse and keyboard, hover over the username and password boxes to enter your login credentials. If using a a remote, click your OK button and enter credentials with the on screen keyboard. Click “Done” when finished.   When you are ready to login, enter your credentials and click “Login.” On first login, you’ll be prompted to calibrate your screen. If you choose “Skip” you can always calibrate your screen later under Settings > Appearance > Screen. When Boxee opens, you’ll be greeted by the Home screen. To the left will be your Feeds. This will be any recommended content from friends on Boxee, and social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. Although, when you first login, it will mainly be info from the Boxee staff. You’ll have “Featured” content in the center and your Queue on the right. You’ll also have the Menu along the top.   Pop Up Menu The Pop Menu can be accessed by hitting the “Esc” key, or back on your remote. Depending on where you are located in Boxee, you may have to hit it a few time to “back out” to the Pop Up menu. From the Pop Up Menu, you can easily access any of the resources, settings, and favorites. Queue The Queue is your playlist of TV shows, movies, or Internet videos you wish to watch. When you find an offering you’d like to watch, select it and then click “Add to Queue.” The selected item will be added to your Queue and can be accessed at any time from the Menu. TV Show Library The TV Show library can contain files from your local hard drive or streaming content from the Web. Boxee pulls content from a variety of online locations such as Hulu and TV network sites. Click on the show to see which specific episodes are currently available. To search for your favorite shows, click on the yellow arrow to the left, or navigate to the left with your keyboard or remote. Enter your selection into the search box. My Apps By default, the “My Apps” section includes a list of the most popular apps, such as Netflix, Pandora, YouTube, and others. You can remove Apps from “My Apps,” or add new Apps from the Apps Library.   To access all the available Apps, click on the left arrow button, or click on the yellow arrow at the left, then select “App Library.” Choose an App from the Library and click it to open… … and then select “Add to My Apps.” Or, you can click start to play the App if you don’t wish to Add it to your “My Apps.”   Music, Pictures, and Movies Boxee will scan your PC for movies, pictures, and music. You can choose to scan specific folders by clicking on “Scan Media Folders…” … or from the Pop Up Menu, selecting Settings > Media, and then browsing for your media.   Conclusion Boxee to be a great way to integrate your local media with online streaming content. It can be run as an application on your home PC, or as a stand alone media PC. It should also be noted, however, that your access to online content will vary depending on your country. If you are a Windows Media Center user and and want to add the additional features of Boxee, check out our article on integrating Boxee with Windows 7 Media Center. Download Boxee Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Integrate Boxee with Media Center in Windows 7Disable Fast User Switching on Windows XPOops! Sorry About the Feed ErrorsDisplay a list of Started Services from the Command Line (Windows)Feedburner to Google: Worst Transition Ever. TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Discover New Bundled Feeds in Google Reader Play Music in Chrome by Simply Dragging a File 15 Great Illustrations by Chow Hon Lam Easily Sync Files & Folders with Friends & Family Amazon Free Kindle for PC Download Stretch popurls.com with a Stylish Script (Firefox)

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• Parallelism in .NET – Part 14, The Different Forms of Task

  - by Reed

  Before discussing Task creation and actual usage in concurrent environments, I will briefly expand upon my introduction of the Task class and provide a short explanation of the distinct forms of Task.  The Task Parallel Library includes four distinct, though related, variations on the Task class. In my introduction to the Task class, I focused on the most basic version of Task.  This version of Task, the standard Task class, is most often used with an Action delegate.  This allows you to implement for each task within the task decomposition as a single delegate. Typically, when using the new threading constructs in .NET 4 and the Task Parallel Library, we use lambda expressions to define anonymous methods.  The advantage of using a lambda expression is that it allows the Action delegate to directly use variables in the calling scope.  This eliminates the need to make separate Task classes for Action<T>, Action<T1,T2>, and all of the other Action<…> delegate types.  As an example, suppose we wanted to make a Task to handle the ”Show Splash” task from our earlier decomposition.  Even if this task required parameters, such as a message to display, we could still use an Action delegate specified via a lambda: // Store this as a local variable string messageForSplashScreen = GetSplashScreenMessage(); // Create our task Task showSplashTask = new Task( () => { // We can use variables in our outer scope, // as well as methods scoped to our class! this.DisplaySplashScreen(messageForSplashScreen); }); .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } This provides a huge amount of flexibility.  We can use this single form of task for any task which performs an operation, provided the only information we need to track is whether the task has completed successfully or not.  This leads to my first observation: Use a Task with a System.Action delegate for any task for which no result is generated. This observation leads to an obvious corollary: we also need a way to define a task which generates a result.  The Task Parallel Library provides this via the Task<TResult> class. Task<TResult> subclasses the standard Task class, providing one additional feature – the ability to return a value back to the user of the task.  This is done by switching from providing an Action delegate to providing a Func<TResult> delegate.  If we decompose our problem, and we realize we have one task where its result is required by a future operation, this can be handled via Task<TResult>.  For example, suppose we want to make a task for our “Check for Update” task, we could do: Task<bool> checkForUpdateTask = new Task<bool>( () => { return this.CheckWebsiteForUpdate(); }); Later, we would start this task, and perform some other work.  At any point in the future, we could get the value from the Task<TResult>.Result property, which will cause our thread to block until the task has finished processing: // This uses Task<bool> checkForUpdateTask generated above... // Start the task, typically on a background thread checkForUpdateTask.Start(); // Do some other work on our current thread this.DoSomeWork(); // Discover, from our background task, whether an update is available // This will block until our task completes bool updateAvailable = checkForUpdateTask.Result; This leads me to my second observation: Use a Task<TResult> with a System.Func<TResult> delegate for any task which generates a result. Task and Task<TResult> provide a much cleaner alternative to the previous Asynchronous Programming design patterns in the .NET framework.  Instead of trying to implement IAsyncResult, and providing BeginXXX() and EndXXX() methods, implementing an asynchronous programming API can be as simple as creating a method that returns a Task or Task<TResult>.  The client side of the pattern also is dramatically simplified – the client can call a method, then either choose to call task.Wait() or use task.Result when it needs to wait for the operation’s completion. While this provides a much cleaner model for future APIs, there is quite a bit of infrastructure built around the current Asynchronous Programming design patterns.  In order to provide a model to work with existing APIs, two other forms of Task exist.  There is a constructor for Task which takes an Action<Object> and a state parameter.  In addition, there is a constructor for creating a Task<TResult> which takes a Func<Object, TResult> as well as a state parameter.  When using these constructors, the state parameter is stored in the Task.AsyncState property. While these two overloads exist, and are usable directly, I strongly recommend avoiding this for new development.  The two forms of Task which take an object state parameter exist primarily for interoperability with traditional .NET Asynchronous Programming methodologies.  Using lambda expressions to capture variables from the scope of the creator is a much cleaner approach than using the untyped state parameters, since lambda expressions provide full type safety without introducing new variables.

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• Parallelism in .NET – Part 15, Making Tasks Run: The TaskScheduler

  - by Reed

  In my introduction to the Task class, I specifically made mention that the Task class does not directly provide it’s own execution.  In addition, I made a strong point that the Task class itself is not directly related to threads or multithreading.  Rather, the Task class is used to implement our decomposition of tasks.  Once we’ve implemented our tasks, we need to execute them.  In the Task Parallel Library, the execution of Tasks is handled via an instance of the TaskScheduler class. The TaskScheduler class is an abstract class which provides a single function: it schedules the tasks and executes them within an appropriate context.  This class is the class which actually runs individual Task instances.  The .NET Framework provides two (internal) implementations of the TaskScheduler class. Since a Task, based on our decomposition, should be a self-contained piece of code, parallel execution makes sense when executing tasks.  The default implementation of the TaskScheduler class, and the one most often used, is based on the ThreadPool.  This can be retrieved via the TaskScheduler.Default property, and is, by default, what is used when we just start a Task instance with Task.Start(). Normally, when a Task is started by the default TaskScheduler, the task will be treated as a single work item, and run on a ThreadPool thread.  This pools tasks, and provides Task instances all of the advantages of the ThreadPool, including thread pooling for reduced resource usage, and an upper cap on the number of work items.  In addition, .NET 4 brings us a much improved thread pool, providing work stealing and reduced locking within the thread pool queues.  By using the default TaskScheduler, our Tasks are run asynchronously on the ThreadPool. There is one notable exception to my above statements when using the default TaskScheduler.  If a Task is created with the TaskCreationOptions set to TaskCreationOptions.LongRunning, the default TaskScheduler will generate a new thread for that Task, at least in the current implementation.  This is useful for Tasks which will persist for most of the lifetime of your application, since it prevents your Task from starving the ThreadPool of one of it’s work threads. The Task Parallel Library provides one other implementation of the TaskScheduler class.  In addition to providing a way to schedule tasks on the ThreadPool, the framework allows you to create a TaskScheduler which works within a specified SynchronizationContext.  This scheduler can be retrieved within a thread that provides a valid SynchronizationContext by calling the TaskScheduler.FromCurrentSynchronizationContext() method. This implementation of TaskScheduler is intended for use with user interface development.  Windows Forms and Windows Presentation Foundation both require any access to user interface controls to occur on the same thread that created the control.  For example, if you want to set the text within a Windows Forms TextBox, and you’re working on a background thread, that UI call must be marshaled back onto the UI thread.  The most common way this is handled depends on the framework being used.  In Windows Forms, Control.Invoke or Control.BeginInvoke is most often used.  In WPF, the equivelent calls are Dispatcher.Invoke or Dispatcher.BeginInvoke. As an example, say we’re working on a background thread, and we want to update a TextBlock in our user interface with a status label.  The code would typically look something like: // Within background thread work... string status = GetUpdatedStatus(); Dispatcher.BeginInvoke(DispatcherPriority.Normal, new Action( () => { statusLabel.Text = status; })); // Continue on in background method .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } This works fine, but forces your method to take a dependency on WPF or Windows Forms.  There is an alternative option, however.  Both Windows Forms and WPF, when initialized, setup a SynchronizationContext in their thread, which is available on the UI thread via the SynchronizationContext.Current property.  This context is used by classes such as BackgroundWorker to marshal calls back onto the UI thread in a framework-agnostic manner. The Task Parallel Library provides the same functionality via the TaskScheduler.FromCurrentSynchronizationContext() method.  When setting up our Tasks, as long as we’re working on the UI thread, we can construct a TaskScheduler via: TaskScheduler uiScheduler = TaskScheduler.FromCurrentSynchronizationContext(); We then can use this scheduler on any thread to marshal data back onto the UI thread.  For example, our code above can then be rewritten as: string status = GetUpdatedStatus(); (new Task(() => { statusLabel.Text = status; })) .Start(uiScheduler); // Continue on in background method This is nice since it allows us to write code that isn’t tied to Windows Forms or WPF, but is still fully functional with those technologies.  I’ll discuss even more uses for the SynchronizationContext based TaskScheduler when I demonstrate task continuations, but even without continuations, this is a very useful construct. In addition to the two implementations provided by the Task Parallel Library, it is possible to implement your own TaskScheduler.  The ParallelExtensionsExtras project within the Samples for Parallel Programming provides nine sample TaskScheduler implementations.  These include schedulers which restrict the maximum number of concurrent tasks, run tasks on a single threaded apartment thread, use a new thread per task, and more.

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• Try out Windows Phone 7 on your PC today

  - by Matthew Guay

  Anticipation has been building for the new Windows Phone 7 Series ever since Microsoft unveiled it at the Mobile World Congress in February.  Now, thanks to free developer tools, you can get a first-hand experience of the basic Windows Phone 7 Series devices on your PC. Windows Phone 7 Series represents a huge change in the mobile field for Microsoft, bringing the acclaimed Zune HD UI to an innovative phone platform.  Windows Mobile has often been criticized for being behind other Smartphone platforms, but Microsoft seeks to regain the lead with this new upcoming release.  A platform must have developers behind it to be useful, so they have released a full set of free development tools so anyone can make apps for it today.  Or, if you simply want to play with Windows Phone 7, you can use the included emulator to try out the new Metro UI.  Here’s how to do this today on your Vista or 7 computer. Please note: These tools are a Customer Technology Preview release, so only install them if you’re comfortable using pre-release software. Getting Started First, download the Windows Phone Developer Tools CTP (link below), and run the installer.  This will install the Customer Technology Preview (CTP) versions of Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone, Windows Phone Emulator, Silverlight for Windows Phone, and XNA 4.0 Game Studio on your computer, all of which are required and cannot be installed individually. Accept the license agreement when prompted. Click “Install Now” to install the tools you need.  The only setup customization option is where to save the files, so choose Customize if you need to do so. Setup will now automatically download and install the components you need, and will additionally download either 32 or 64 bit programs depending on your operating system. About halfway thorough the installation, you’ll be prompted to reboot your system.  Once your computer is rebooted, setup will automatically resume without further input.   When setup is finished, click “Run the Product Now” to get started. Running Windows Phone 7 on your PC Now that you’ve got the Windows Phone Developer tools installed, it’s time to get the Windows Phone emulator running.  If you clicked “Run the Product Now” when the setup finished, Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone should have already started.   If not, simply enter “visual studio” in your start menu search and select “Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone”. Now, to run the Windows Phone 7 emulator, we have to test an application.  So, even if you don’t know how to program, we can open a phone application template, and then test it to run the emulator.  First, click New Project on the left hand side of the front page. Any of the application templates would work for this, but here let’s select “Windows Phone Application”, and then click Ok. Here’s your new application template, which already contains the basic phone application framework.  This is where you’d start if you want to develop a Windows Phone app, but for now we just want to see Windows Phone 7 in action. So, to run the emulator, click Debug in the menu and then select Start Debugging. Your new application will launch inside the Windows Phone 7 Series emulator.  The default template doesn’t give us much, but it does show an example application running in Windows Phone 7.   Exploring Windows Phone 7 Click the Windows button on the emulator to go to the home screen.  Notice the Zune HD-like transition animation.  The emulator only includes Internet Explorer, your test application, and a few settings. Click the arrow on the right to see the available applications in a list. Settings lets you change the theme, regional settings, and the date and time in your emulator.  It also has an applications settings pane, but this currently isn’t populated. The Time settings shows a unique Windows Phone UI. You can return to the home screen by pressing the Windows button.  Here’s the Internet Explorer app running, with the virtual keyboard open to enter an address.  Please note that this emulator can also accept input from your keyboard, so you can enter addresses without clicking on the virtual keyboard. And here’s Google running in Internet Explorer on Windows Phone 7. Windows Phone 7 supports accelerometers, and you can simulate this in the emulator.  Click one of the rotate buttons to rotate the screen in that direction. Here’s our favorite website in Internet Explorer on Windows Phone 7 in landscape mode. All this, running right inside your Windows 7 desktop… Developer tools for Windows Phone 7 Although it may be fun to play with the Windows Phone 7 emulator, developers will be more excited to actually be able to create new and exciting apps for it.  The Windows Phone Developer Tools download includes Visual Studio Express and XNA Game Studio 4.0 which lets you create enticing games and apps for Windows Phones.  All development for Windows Phones will be in C#, Silverlight, and the XNA game framework.  Visual Studio Express for Windows Phone includes templates for these, and additionally has code samples to help you get started with development. Conclusion Many features are still not functional in this preview version, such as the search button and most of the included applications.  However, this still gives you a great way to experience firsthand the future of the Windows Phone platform.  And, for developers, this is your chance to set your mark on the Windows Phone 7 Series even before it is released to the public.  Happy playing and developing! Links Download Windows Phone Developer Tools CTP Windows Phone Developer Site Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Keep Track of Homework Assignments with SoshikuWeekend Fun: Watch Television On Your PC With TVUPlayerEasily Manage Your Downloads with Download StatusbarCreate a Shortcut or Hotkey to Mute the System Volume in WindowsHow-To Geek on Lifehacker: How to Make Windows Vista Less Annoying TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Convert the Quick Launch Bar into a Super Application Launcher Automate Tasks in Linux with Crontab Discover New Bundled Feeds in Google Reader Play Music in Chrome by Simply Dragging a File 15 Great Illustrations by Chow Hon Lam Easily Sync Files & Folders with Friends & Family

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• Test All Features of Windows Phone 7 On Your PC

  - by Matthew Guay

  Are you developer or just excited about the upcoming Windows Phone 7, and want to try it out now?  Thanks to free developer tools from Microsoft and a new unlocked emulator rom, you can try out most of the exciting features today from your PC. Last week we showed you how to try out Windows Phone 7 on your PC and get started developing for the upcoming new devices.  We noticed, however, that the emulator only contains Internet Explorer Mobile and some settings.  This is still interesting to play around with, but it wasn’t the full Windows Phone 7 experience. Some enterprising tweakers discovered that more applications were actually included in the emulator, but were simply hidden from users.  Developer Dan Ardelean then figured out how to re-enable these features, and released a tweaked emulator rom so everyone can try out all of the Windows Phone 7 features for themselves.  Here we’ll look at how you can run this new emulator image on your PC, and then look at some interesting features in Windows Phone 7. Editor Note: This modified emulator image is not official, and isn’t sanctioned by Microsoft. Use your own judgment when choosing to download and use the emulator. Setting Up Emulator Rom To test-drive Windows Phone 7 on your PC, you must first download and install the Windows Phone Developer Tools CTP (link below).  Follow the steps we showed you last week at: Try out Windows Phone 7 on your PC today.  Once it’s installed, go ahead and run the default emulator as we showed to make sure everything works ok. Once the Windows Phone Developer Tools are installed and running, download the new emulator rom from XDA Forums (link below).  This will be a zip file, so extract it first. Note where you save the file, as you will need the address in the next step. Now, to run our new emulator image, we need to open the emulator in command line and point to the new rom image.  To do this, browse to the correct directory, depending on whether you’re running the 32 bit or 64 bit version of Windows: 32 bit: C:\Program Files\Microsoft XDE\1.0\ 64 bit: C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft XDE\1.0\ Hold your Shift key down and right-click in the folder.  Choose Open Command Window here. At the command prompt, enter XDE.exe followed by the location of your new rom image.  Here, we downloaded the rom to our download folder, so at the command prompt we entered: XDE.exe C:\Users\Matthew\Downloads\WM70Full\WM70Full.bin The emulator loads … with the full Windows Phone 7 experience! To make it easier, let’s make a shortcut on our desktop to load the emulator with the new rom directly.  Right-click on your desktop (or any folder you want to create the shortcut in), select New, and then Shortcut. Now, in the box, we need to enter the path for the emulator followed by the location of our rom.  Both items must be in quotes.  So, in our test, we entered the following: 32 bit: “C:\Program Files\Microsoft XDE\1.0\” “C:\Users\Matthew\Downloads\WM70Full\WM70Full.bin” 64 bit: “C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft XDE\1.0\” “C:\Users\Matthew\Downloads\WM70Full\WM70Full.bin” Make sure to enter the correct location of the new emulator rom for your computer, and keep both items in separate quotes.  Click next when you’ve entered the location. Name the shortcut; we named it Windows Phone 7, but simply enter whatever you’d like.  Click Finish when you’re done. You should now have a nice Windows Phone icon and your fully functional shortcut!  Double-click it to run the Windows Phone 7 emulator as above. Features in the Unlocked Windows Phone 7 Emulator So let’s look at what you can do with this new emulator.  Almost everything you’ve seen in demos from the Mobile World Conference and Mix’10 are right here for you to play with.  Here’s the application menu, which you can access by clicking on the arrow on the top of the home screen, which shows how much stuff they’ve got in this!   And, of course, even the home screen itself shows much more activity than it did in the original emulator. Let’s check out some of these sections.  Here’s Zune running on Windows Phone 7, and the Zune Marketplace.  The animations are beautiful, so be sure to check this out yourself. The new picture hub is much nicer than any picture viewer included with Windows Mobile in the past…   Stay productive, and on schedule with the new Calendar. The XBOX hub gives us only a hint of things to come, and the links to games now are simply placeholders. Here’s a look at the Office hub.  This doesn’t show up on the homescreen right now, but you can access it in the applications menu.  Office obviously still has a lot of work left on it, but even at a glance here it looks like it includes a lot more functionality than Office Mobile in Windows Mobile 6. Here’s a look at each of the three apps: Word, Excel, and OneNote, and the formatting pallet in Office apps.   This emulator also includes a lot more settings than the default one, including settings for individual applications. You can even activate the screen lock, and try out the lift-to-peek-or-unlock feature… Finally, this version of Windows Phone 7 includes a very nice SystemInfo app with an advanced task manager.  We hope this is still available when the actual phones are released. Conclusion If you’re excited about the upcoming Windows Phone 7 series, or simply want to learn more about what’s coming, this is a great way to test it out.  With these exciting new hubs and applications, there’s something here for everyone.  Let us know what you like most about Windows Phone 7 and what your favorite app or hub is. Links Please note: These roms are not officially supported by Microsoft, and could be taken down. Download the unlocked Windows Phone 7 emulator from XDA Forums – click the link in this post to download How the unlocked emulator image was created Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Try out Windows Phone 7 on your PC todayGet stats on your Ruby on Rails codeDisable Windows Vista’s Built-in CD/DVD Burning FeaturesWeek in Geek – The Slick Windows 7 File Copy Animation EditionGeek Fun: Virtualized Old School Windows – Windows 95 TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Get Better Windows Search With UltraSearch Scan News With NY Times Article Skimmer SpeedyFox Claims to Speed up your Firefox Beware Hover Kitties Test Drive Mobile Phones Online With TryPhone Ben & Jerry’s Free Cone Day, 3/23/10

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• The Windows Browser Ballot Screen Offers Web Browser Choice to European Users

  - by Matthew Guay

  Since March, our friends across the pond in Europe get to decide which browser they want to install with their Windows OS. Today we thought we would take a look at the ballot choices, some are well known, and others you may not have heard of. Windows users in European countries should start seeing the so called “Browser Ballot Screen” after installing the Windows Update KB976002 (link below). The browser ballot offers a dozen different browsers, including some you’ve likely never heard of.  They each have some unique features, and are all free, and here we take a quick look at each of them. Internet Explorer 8 Internet Explorer is the world’s most used web browser, as it’s bundled with Windows. It also includes several unique features, including Accelerators that make it easy to search or find a map of a location, and InPrivate filtering to directly control what sites can get personal information.  Additionally, it offers great integration with Windows Touch and the new taskbar in Windows 7. IE 8 runs on Windows XP and newer, and is bundled with Windows 7. Mozilla Firefox 3.6 Firefox is the most popular browser other than Internet Explorer.  It is the modern descendant of Netscape, and is loved by web developers for its adherence to web standards, openness, and expandability.  It offers thousands of Add-ons and themes to let you customize it to fit your preferences. The most recent version has added Personas, which are quick, lightweight themes to let you personalize the look your browser. It’s open source, and runs on all modern versions of Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. Of course thanks to Asian Angel, our resident browser expert, you can check out several articles regarding this popular IE alternative. Google Chrome 4 Google Chrome has gained an impressive amount of market share during its short time in the market. It offers a minimalistic interface and fast speeds with intensive web applications. The address bar is also a search bar, so you can enter a search query or web address and quickly get the information you need. With version 4 you can add a growing number of extensions, personalize it with a variety of stylish themes, and automatically translate foreign websites into your own language. Opera 10.50 Although Opera has been around for over a decade, relatively few users have used it. With the new 10.50 release, Opera has many unique features packed in a sleek UI. It integrates great with Aero and the Windows 7 taskbar, and lets you preview the contents of your websites in the tab bar. It also includes Opera Unite, a small personal web server to make file sharing easy, Opera Turbo to speed up your internet when the connection is slow, and Opera Link to keep all your copies of Opera in sync. It’s a popular browser on many mobile devices, and version 10.50 has a lot of enhancements. Apple Safari 4 Safari is the default browser in Mac OS X, and starting with version 3 it has been available for Windows as well. It’s based on Webkit, the popular new rendering engine that provides great speed and standards compatibility.  Safari 4 lets you browse your browsing history in a unique Coverflow interface, and shows your Top Sites in a fancy, 3D interface.  It’s also great for viewing mobile websites for the iPhone and other mobile devices through Developer Tools. Flock 2.5 Based on the popular Firefox core, Flock brings a multitude of social features to your browsing experience. You can view the latest YouTube videos, Flickr pictures, update your favorite social network, and keep up with your webmail thanks to It’s integration with a wide variety of services. You can even post to your blog through the integrated blog editor. If your time online is mostly spent in social services, this may be a browser you want to check out. Maxthon 2.5 Maxthon is a unique browser that builds on Internet Explorer to bring more features with IE’s rendering. Formerly known as MyIE2, Maxthon was popular for bringing tabbed browsing with IE rendering during the days of IE 6.  Today Maxthon supports a wide range of plugins and skins, so you can customize it however you want. It includes mouse gestures, a web accelerator to speed up pokey internet connections, a content blocker to remove unwanted content from sites, an online account to backup your favorites, and a nice download manager. Avant Browser Another nice browser based on Internet Explorer, Avant brings a wide variety of features in a nice brushed-metal interface. It includes an integrated AutoFill for forms, mouse gestures, customizable skins, and privacy protection features. It also includes a Flash blocker that will only load flash in webpages when you select them. You can also integrate Avant with an online account to store your bookmarks, feeds, settings and passwords online. Sleipnir Sleipnir is a customizable browser meant for advance users that is quite popular in Japan. It’s built on the Trident engine and virtually every aspect of is customizable unlike Internet Explorer.   FlashPeak SlimBrowser SlimBrowser from FlashPeak incorporates a lot of features like Popup Killer, Auto Login, site filtering and more. It’s based on Internet Explorer but offers a lot more customizable options out of the box.   K-meleon This basic browser is light on system resources and based on the Gecko engine. It’s been in development for years on SourceForge, and if you like to tweak virtually any aspect of your browser, this might be a good choice for you.   GreenBrowser GreenBrowser is based on Internet Explorer and is available in several languages. It has a large amount of features out of the box and is light on system resources.   Conclusion The European Union asked for more choices in the web browser they could choose from when installing Windows, and with the Browser Ballot Screen, they certainly get a variety to choose from.  If you’ve tried out some of the lesser known browsers, or think some important ones have been left out, leave a comment and tell us about it. Learn More About the Browser Ballot Screen and Download Alternatives to IE Windows Update KB976002 Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Set the Default Browser on Ubuntu From the Command LineQuick Tip: Empty Internet Explorer 7 Cache when Browser is ClosedView Hidden Files and Folders in Ubuntu File BrowserSet the Default Browser and Email Client in UbuntuAccess Multiple Browsers from Firefox with Browser View Plus TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Play Music in Chrome by Simply Dragging a File 15 Great Illustrations by Chow Hon Lam Easily Sync Files & Folders with Friends & Family Amazon Free Kindle for PC Download Stretch popurls.com with a Stylish Script (Firefox) OldTvShows.org – Find episodes of Hitchcock, Soaps, Game Shows and more

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• Parallelism in .NET – Part 6, Declarative Data Parallelism

  - by Reed

  When working with a problem that can be decomposed by data, we have a collection, and some operation being performed upon the collection.  I’ve demonstrated how this can be parallelized using the Task Parallel Library and imperative programming using imperative data parallelism via the Parallel class.  While this provides a huge step forward in terms of power and capabilities, in many cases, special care must still be given for relative common scenarios. C# 3.0 and Visual Basic 9.0 introduced a new, declarative programming model to .NET via the LINQ Project.  When working with collections, we can now write software that describes what we want to occur without having to explicitly state how the program should accomplish the task.  By taking advantage of LINQ, many operations become much shorter, more elegant, and easier to understand and maintain.  Version 4.0 of the .NET framework extends this concept into the parallel computation space by introducing Parallel LINQ. Before we delve into PLINQ, let’s begin with a short discussion of LINQ.  LINQ, the extensions to the .NET Framework which implement language integrated query, set, and transform operations, is implemented in many flavors.  For our purposes, we are interested in LINQ to Objects.  When dealing with parallelizing a routine, we typically are dealing with in-memory data storage.  More data-access oriented LINQ variants, such as LINQ to SQL and LINQ to Entities in the Entity Framework fall outside of our concern, since the parallelism there is the concern of the data base engine processing the query itself. LINQ (LINQ to Objects in particular) works by implementing a series of extension methods, most of which work on IEnumerable<T>.  The language enhancements use these extension methods to create a very concise, readable alternative to using traditional foreach statement.  For example, let’s revisit our minimum aggregation routine we wrote in Part 4: double min = double.MaxValue; foreach(var item in collection) { double value = item.PerformComputation(); min = System.Math.Min(min, value); } .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } Here, we’re doing a very simple computation, but writing this in an imperative style.  This can be loosely translated to English as: Create a very large number, and save it in min Loop through each item in the collection. For every item: Perform some computation, and save the result If the computation is less than min, set min to the computation Although this is fairly easy to follow, it’s quite a few lines of code, and it requires us to read through the code, step by step, line by line, in order to understand the intention of the developer. We can rework this same statement, using LINQ: double min = collection.Min(item => item.PerformComputation()); Here, we’re after the same information.  However, this is written using a declarative programming style.  When we see this code, we’d naturally translate this to English as: Save the Min value of collection, determined via calling item.PerformComputation() That’s it – instead of multiple logical steps, we have one single, declarative request.  This makes the developer’s intentions very clear, and very easy to follow.  The system is free to implement this using whatever method required. Parallel LINQ (PLINQ) extends LINQ to Objects to support parallel operations.  This is a perfect fit in many cases when you have a problem that can be decomposed by data.  To show this, let’s again refer to our minimum aggregation routine from Part 4, but this time, let’s review our final, parallelized version: // Safe, and fast! double min = double.MaxValue; // Make a "lock" object object syncObject = new object(); Parallel.ForEach( collection, // First, we provide a local state initialization delegate. () => double.MaxValue, // Next, we supply the body, which takes the original item, loop state, // and local state, and returns a new local state (item, loopState, localState) => { double value = item.PerformComputation(); return System.Math.Min(localState, value); }, // Finally, we provide an Action<TLocal>, to "merge" results together localState => { // This requires locking, but it's only once per used thread lock(syncObj) min = System.Math.Min(min, localState); } ); Here, we’re doing the same computation as above, but fully parallelized.  Describing this in English becomes quite a feat: Create a very large number, and save it in min Create a temporary object we can use for locking Call Parallel.ForEach, specifying three delegates For the first delegate: Initialize a local variable to hold the local state to a very large number For the second delegate: For each item in the collection, perform some computation, save the result If the result is less than our local state, save the result in local state For the final delegate: Take a lock on our temporary object to protect our min variable Save the min of our min and local state variables Although this solves our problem, and does it in a very efficient way, we’ve created a set of code that is quite a bit more difficult to understand and maintain. PLINQ provides us with a very nice alternative.  In order to use PLINQ, we need to learn one new extension method that works on IEnumerable<T> – ParallelEnumerable.AsParallel(). That’s all we need to learn in order to use PLINQ: one single method.  We can write our minimum aggregation in PLINQ very simply: double min = collection.AsParallel().Min(item => item.PerformComputation()); By simply adding “.AsParallel()” to our LINQ to Objects query, we converted this to using PLINQ and running this computation in parallel!  This can be loosely translated into English easily, as well: Process the collection in parallel Get the Minimum value, determined by calling PerformComputation on each item Here, our intention is very clear and easy to understand.  We just want to perform the same operation we did in serial, but run it “as parallel”.  PLINQ completely extends LINQ to Objects: the entire functionality of LINQ to Objects is available.  By simply adding a call to AsParallel(), we can specify that a collection should be processed in parallel.  This is simple, safe, and incredibly useful.

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• Interesting things – Twitter annotations and your phone as a web server

  - by jamiet

  I overheard/read a couple of things today that really made me, data junkie that I am, take a step back and think, “Hmmm, yeah, that could be really interesting” and I wanted to make a note of them here so that (a) I could bring them to the attention of anyone that happens to read this and (b) I can maybe come back here in a few years and see if either of these have come to fruition. Your phone as a web server While listening to Jon Udell’s (twitter) “Interviews with Innovators Podcast” today in which he interviewed Herbert Van de Sompel (twitter) about his Momento project. During the interview Jon and Herbert made the following remarks: Jon: [some people] really had this vision of a web of servers, the notion that every node on the internet, every connected entity, is potentially a server and a client…we can see where we’re getting to a point where these endpoint devices we have in our pockets are going to be massively capable and it may be in the not too distant future that significant chunks of the web archive will be cached all over the place including on your own machine… Herbert: wasn’t it Opera who at one point turned your browser into a server? That really got my brain ticking. We all carry a mobile phone with us and therefore we all potentially carry a mobile web server with us as well and to my mind the only thing really stopping that from happening is the capabilities of the phone hardware, the capabilities of the network infrastructure and the will to just bloody do it. Certainly all the standards required for addressing a web server on a phone already exist (to this uninitiated observer DNS and IPv6 seem to solve that problem) so why not? I tweeted about the idea and Rory Street answered back with “why would you want a phone to be a web server?”: Its a fair question and one that I would like to try and answer. Mobile phones are increasingly becoming our window onto the world as we use them to upload messages to Twitter, record our location on FourSquare or interact with our friends on Facebook but in each of these cases some other service is acting as our intermediary; to see what I’m thinking you have to go via Twitter, to see where I am you have to go to FourSquare (I’m using ‘I’ liberally, I don’t actually use FourSquare before you ask). Why should this have to be the case? Why can’t that data be decentralised? Why can’t we be masters of our own data universe? If my phone acted as a web server then I could expose all of that information without needing those intermediary services. I see a time when we can pass around URLs such as the following: http://jamiesphone.net/location/current - Where is Jamie right now? http://jamiesphone.net/location/2010-04-21 – Where was Jamie on 21st April 2010? http://jamiesphone.net/thoughts/current – What’s on Jamie’s mind right now? http://jamiesphone.net/blog – What documents is Jamie sharing with me? http://jamiesphone.net/calendar/next7days – Where is Jamie planning to be over the next 7 days? and those URLs get served off of the phone in our pockets. If we govern that data then we can control who has access to it and (crucially) how long its available for. Want to wipe yourself off the face of the web? its pretty easy if you’re in control of all the data – just turn your phone off. None of this exists today but I look forward to a time when it does. Opera really were onto something last June when they announced Opera Unite (admittedly Unite only works because Opera provide an intermediary DNS-alike system – it isn’t totally decentralised). Opening up Twitter annotations Last week Twitter held their first developer conference called Chirp where they announced an upcoming new feature called ‘Twitter Annotations’; in short this will allow us to attach metadata to a Tweet thus enhancing the tweet itself. Think of it as a richer version of hashtags. To think of it another way Twitter are turning their data into a humongous Entity-Attribute-Value or triple-tuple store. That alone has huge implications both for the web and Twitter as a whole – the ability to enrich that 140 characters data and thus make it more useful is indeed compelling however today I stumbled upon a blog post from Eugene Mandel entitled Tweet Annotations – a Way to a Metadata Marketplace? where he proposed the idea of allowing tweets to have metadata added by people other than the person who tweeted the original tweet. This idea really fascinated me especially when I read some of the potential uses that Eugene and his commenters suggested. They included: Amazon could attach an ISBN to a tweet that mentions a book. Specialist clients apps for book lovers could be built up around this metadata. Advertisers could pay to place adverts in metadata. The revenue generated from those adverts could be shared with the tweeter or people who add the metadata. Granted, allowing anyone to add metadata to a tweet has the potential to create a spam problem the like of which we haven’t even envisaged but spam hasn’t halted the growth of the web and neither should it halt the growth of data annotations either. The original tweeter should of course be able to determine who can add metadata and whether it should be moderated. As Eugene says himself: Opening publishing tweet annotations to anyone will open the way to a marketplace of metadata where client developers, data mining companies and advertisers can add new meaning to Twitter and build innovative businesses. What Eugene and his followers did not mention is what I think is potentially the most fascinating use of opening up annotations. Google’s success today is built on their page rank algorithm that measures the validity of a web page by the number of incoming links to it and the page rank of the sites containing those links – its a system built on reputation. Twitter annotations could open up a new paradigm however – let’s call it People rank- where reputation can be measured by the metadata that people choose to apply to links and the websites containing those links. Its not hard to see why Google and Microsoft have paid big bucks to get access to the Twitter firehose! Neither of these features, phones as a web server or the ability to add annotations to other people’s tweets, exist today but I strongly believe that they could dramatically enhance the web as we know it today. I hope to look back on this blog post in a few years in the knowledge that these ideas have been put into place. @Jamiet Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• Find More Streaming TV Online with Clicker.tv

  - by DigitalGeekery

  Looking for a way to access more of your favorite TV Shows and other online entertainment? Today we’ll take a look at Clicker.tv which offers an awesome way to find tons of TV programs and movies. Clicker.tv Clicker.tv is an HTML5 web application that indexes both free and premium content from sources like Hulu, Netflix, Amazon, iTunes, and more. Some movies or episodes, such as those from Netflix and Amazon.com’s Video on Demand, will require viewers to have a membership, or pay a fee to access content. There is also a Clicker.tv app for Boxee.   Navigation Navigating in Clicker.tv is rather easy with your keyboard. Directional Keys: navigate up, down, left, and right. Enter: make a selection Backspace: return to previous screen Escape: return to the Clicker.tv home screen. Note: You can also navigate through Clicker.tv with your PC remote. Recommended Browsers Firefox 3.6 + Safari 4.0 + Internet Explorer 8 + Google Chrome Note: You’ll need the latest version of Flash installed to play the majority of content. Earlier versions of the above browsers may work, but for full keyboard functionality, stick with the recommendations. Using Clicker.tv The first time you go to Clicker.tv, (link below) you’ll be met with a welcome screen and some helpful hints. Click Enter when finished.   The Home screen feature Headliners, Trending Shows, and Trending Episodes. You can scroll through the different options and category links along the left side.   The Search link pulls up an onscreen keyboard so you can enter search terms with a remote as well as a keyboard. Type in your search terms and matching items are displayed on the screen.   You can also browse by a wide variety of categories. Select TV to browse only available TV programs. Or, browse only Movies in the movie category. There are also links for Web content and Music.   Creating an Account You can access all Clicker.tv content without an account, but a Clicker account allows users to create playlists and subscribe to shows and have them automatically added to their playlist. You’ll need to go to Clicker.com and create an account. You’ll find the link at the upper right of the page. Enter a username, password and email address. There also an option to link with Facebook, or you can simply Skip this step.   Go to Clicker.tv and sign in. You can manually type in your credentials or use the onscreen keyboard with your remote.   Settings If you’d prefer not to display content from premium sites or Netflix, you can remove them through the Settings. Toggle Amazon, iTunes and Netflix on or off.   Watching Episodes To watch an episode, select the image to begin playing from the default source, or select one of the other options. You can see in the example below that you can choose to watch the episode from Fox, Hulu, or Amazon Video on Demand.   Your episode will then launch and begin playing from your chosen source. If you choose a premium content source such as iTunes or Amazon’s VOD, you’ll be taken to the Amazon’s website or iTunes and prompted to purchase the content.   Playlists Once you’ve created an account and signed in, you can begin adding Shows to your playlist. Choose a series and select Add to Playlist.   You’ll see in the example below that Family Guy has been Added and the number 142 is shown next to the playlist icon to indicate that 142 episodes has been added to your playlist. Underneath the listings for each episode in your playlist you can mark as Watched, or Remove individual episodes.   You can also view the playlist or make any changes from the Clicker.com website. Click on “Playlist” on the top right of the Clicker.com site to access your playlists. You can select individual episodes from your playlists, remove them, or mark them as watched or unwatched. Clicker.TV and Boxee Boxee offers a Clicker.TV app that features a limited amount of the Clicker.TV content. You’ll find Clicker.TV located in the Boxee Apps Library. Select the Clicker App and then choose Start. From the Clicker App interface you can search or browse for available content. Select an episode you’d like to view… Then select play in the pop up window. You can also add it to your Boxee queue, share it, or add a shortcut, just as you can from other Boxee apps. When you click play your episode will launch and begin playing in Boxee. Conclusion Clicker.TV is currently still in Beta and has some limitations. Typical remotes won’t work completely in all external websites. So, you’ll still need a keyboard to be able to perform some operations such as switching to full screen mode. The Boxee app offers a more fully remote friendly environment, but unfortunately lacks a good portion of the Clicker.tv content. As with many content sites, availability of certain programming may be limited by your geographic location. Want to add Clicker.TV functionality to Windows Media Center? You can do so through the Boxee Integration for Windows 7 Media Center plug-in. Clicker.tv Clicker.com Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Share Digital Media With Other Computers on a Home Network with Windows 7Stream Music and Video Over the Internet with Windows Media Player 12Listen to Online Radio with AntennaEnable Media Streaming in Windows Home Server to Windows Media PlayerNorton Internet Security 2010 [Review] TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips HippoRemote Pro 2.2 Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Nice Websites To Watch TV Shows Online 24 Million Sites Windows Media Player Glass Icons (icons we like) How to Forecast Weather, without Gadgets Outlook Tools, one stop tweaking for any Outlook version Zoofs, find the most popular tweeted YouTube videos

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